SVT#48: Mandy Miller Fights Back

[loubeelou]

Or, The One In Which Mandy Gets Cancer and Overcomes It in the Space of 40 Pages.

Comments

[kakeochi_umai]

I tell you, Jessica, the Unicorns are going to turn absolutely green when they hear what I've got. I am going to get so much attention from everybody, they're going to wish they had let me into the club after all. [grin fades a bit.] What I've got is cancer.

This is a joke, right? A metaphor? Sarcasm? Please, please tell me she didn't actually say that and mean it...

[emeraldsword]

I'm rooting for the denial.... Mind you, I read this when I was younger and that didn't cause me to bat an eyelid - I just thought she was brave *g* Guess it's only when you come back to it that it seems so freaky...

Also, in a faintly alarming coincidence-thing, one of the girls I used to know at school died from non-Hodgekin's lymphoma last year. I didn't know her very well, but she was really pretty in school and she got married about two weeks before she died - her photo was on the front of the local paper and I wouldn't have recognised her.

[loubeelou]

I think she was joking a bit, trying to be brave, but it was a pretty weird thing to say!

[katranna]

Actually I think this just shows that Mandy is brilliant.

Because weird or not, that's exactly how the Unicorns think.

I do think she's being bitter/sarcastic, but come on--the Unicorns and Jessica get upset when ANYTHING gets more attention than them.

As someone said below, I think it's black humor.

[versipellis]

That jealousy-and-attention-re-cancer line is very... odd.

Nice recap! I never read this one, so I was glad to see it.

[bttf4444]

It's pretty hard to not like Marty, do I do think she was also a it naive to not really see The Unicorns for who they were. She even brings up, in the first book of The Unicorn Club, the hospital visits - as proof that the Unicorns weren't really bad.

[suzloua]

"It's pretty hard to not like Marty"

Heehee, I think you have McFly on the brain ;)

Hurray for St Jessica. They should have done a book in which Liz tries with increasing frustration and desperation to do good deeds, but Jess just beatifically outshines them all. It would have been amazing.

[bttf4444]

LOL! I think you're right. I meant Mandy. She is a sweet person, and not as sanctimonious as Liz can be - but she did seem to think too highly of the Unicorns.

[glitterberrys]

She thinks everyone will laugh at her, but only a complete asshole would laugh at a young cancer survivor, right?
Oh wait. This is Sweet Valley. She's screwed.

*snort* I'm so glad you did this one.

I haven't read it since I was a little kid, but I remembered Mandy as having leukemia...I guess because, y'know, that's what every other cancer kid in kidlit gets.

I bet Liz was secretly seething with jealousy that she didn't get to be the one to spearhead the Cover Mandy's Bald Head Fundraiser.

[glitterberrys]

Also, Lila looks like Amber Tamblyn on that cover...

[moondreamerm2]

I thought that was Mandys sister!! That would make more sense